The 31 Days of Cheese - The Reboot - Day 4 Batwoman

Okay this took longer to get going than I wanted. I’ve got something like 8 projects all asking me for my time and things get sidetracked. Anyway I changed the name since reboots are all the rage yes.

Anyway – onward:

Continuing our masked wrestler sidebar – well there’s something never in a million years did I ever dream that I would typing the phrase Masked Wrestler sidebar – it is a funny old world really.

Anyway continuing with our sidebar today’s film is Batwoman made in 1967 in Mexico at the height of the Adam West Batman craze and apparently taking advantage of the rather muddled international property rights to names like “Batwoman” a US film “The Wild World of Batwoman” found themselves looking down the barrel of more than one nasty lawsuit by lawyers for DC comics but either this one passed completely under the radar or they thought it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Anyway the film starring the lovely Maura Monti  features Batwoman as a crime fighter and a masked wrestler in the Santo mode – she is aided by two plainclothes police officers who are the only ones who know Batwoman’s true identity.

The film takes her to Acapulco where a there has been a series of murders of wrestlers. What happens is that the Wrestlers disappear and later are found later dead with their Pineal gland removed.

Why Wrestlers? Why the Penial Gland? What is going on?

Well we find out pretty quickly that the Mad Doctor Williams (they could have worked a bit on the name) along with his assistant Igor (yes Igor) are taking the glands out of Wrestlers (because they are the best physical specimens available – really? Okay) and injecting the gland into a fish.

Why? SCIENCE THAT’S WHY?

Actually Dr. Williams wants to create a human fish hybrid, why is not really spelled out, I guess a mad scientists ideas are going to be a bit off so asking Dr. Williams why he wants to make a man fish is going to be a waste of time.

Following the disappearance of yet another wrestler (known as The Swede) Batwoman and her team decide to investigate Dr. Williams who has made his headquarters on rather large Yhatch  named REPTICLUS – seriously he might as well have run up a flag with the phrase “I am a mad scientist” with that name on his boat.

Anyway Batwoman then gets aboard the boat discovers that Williams has partially succeeded he’s got a fish man but  it’s about the size of doll so what’s point. In the course of this Batwoman is captured and Williams is about to have her put under so he can make a fish woman! (Nobody ever tries to make a fish dog or cat in these films) Batwoman spoils the plan by tossing acid on Williams face burning half of it and then she escapes.

The rest of the film involves  Batwoman  being menaced by the various underlings of the mad doctor including the fish man now grown to full size by radiation (of course it does)  a lot of tooing and froing follows but in the end both Batwoman and her assistants end up back on the yacht but the monster itself spoils the Doctors Plans and then the ship blows up.

There is a lot of silliness in this film – not quite as silly as the Batman Adam West series and Muara is very good looking and is in a bikini a lot – like when she’s Batwoman – she wears a grey undergarment when wrestling and it looks (as several reviewers have noted) like the wrestling scenes were done using a body double.

My last note is that while I’ll never quibble about how a masked superhero goes about their business, I’m not sure that wearing false eyelashes as in really really big false eyelashes is the best idea.

The Bob Muir and the Enemy Below Podcast 4-5-17

The Bob Muir and the Enemy Below Podcast 4-5-17

The Revenge of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese Day 3 – Superargo and the Faceless Giants.

Strange as it may seem to one, Mexico was not the only country that made films about masked Wrestlers – (warning we are going into a bit of sidebar with the next three films being on this subject) – this is an Italian version the second (of two films) featuring one Superargo (I don’t have the slightest idea what the name means – Argo was the name of the ship Jason sailed on to find the golden fleece so his name means supership? Really?  Well, let us let this pass) a former professional wrestler turned secret agent for the police.

While still wearing the wrestling costume which is mostly red or red-orange tights with a black mask.  While it does make it hard for him so say infiltrate a gang it does have some useful features like being bullet proof.

Anyway – per the ever infallible IMDB this film is about how ‘a masked wrestler/superhero goes up against a madman and his army of Robots’

The Robots being the faceless giants of the title – but they really aren’t faceless they have stockings or some such like thing pulled over their heads which mash the features a bit.

The story such as it is, involves said mad scientist using his robot army to kidnap elite athletes (and professional wrestlers are included in this) and then making his kidnap victims into more robots (cyborgs technically but let’s not quibble life is too short). This does beggar the question of how he got started (Did he start by kidnapping 98 pound weaklings and then worked his way up?) but let’s just let that idea go, otherwise we could be here all evening.

The rash of kidnappings leads the head of the whatever country this Secret Service to ask the acting head of the Police – in an utterly meaningless bit of business we are told the head of the police is in Florida for fishing – for help, he suggests Superargo, the Secret Service head is, as any normal human being would be, somewhat leery of trusting the biggest case he has to a man how wears well, what he wears.

In any event they go to meet Superargo who whatever his other powers are, is more than a bit of a smug dick showing up his powers of levitation, mind reading (‘your mind is very shallow and it’s easy to pick up your thoughts’ is a quote) and using the power of his mind to break things.

(Some of this is used later in the film so at least they bothered to establish his abilities rather than just make them up when they needed them)

He also has an Indian swami or something as a companion who has been teaching him all this – I forget his name so let’s just call him Bill.

Anyway, what transpires is that Superargo is such a dick to the cops that they leave but later after yet another kidnapping the head of the Secret Service comes groveling to Superargo who then demands to be allowed to run the case his way. And this is kind of mistake.

Because despite his abilities, Superargo is awful at this. His first plan is to guard the sister of one of the kidnapped athletes – the faceless giants come in and after a long fight the girl is kidnapped Superargo gives chase in his jaguar and promptly loses the trail.

His next plan is to announce that he is going to return to the ring setting himself up as a potential kidnap target by the faceless giants who aren’t all that big six foot or a bit taller with the weird helmet thing they wear.

And yes the robots promptly kidnap Superargo after his match. But wait that wasn’t Superargo! It was someone dressed as Superargo, Superargo and Bill give chase and again loses the trail.

0-2 guys.

As they are stumbling about in the woods looking for the Giants and the guy dressed as Superargo (who is never mentioned again and one assumes killed in a messy way once his deception is discovered) they meet the granddaughter or something of a famous scientist who has gone mad but was, before he went mad, working on something similar to whatever is creating the Faceless Giants – and she says well I live in that castle over there with some scientist chap who was the mad doctor’s assistant.

Connection? Yah think?

Superargo tries interviewing the mad doctor which doesn’t work (0-3) then tries breaking into the castle and is caught (0-4) eventually discoverers how the cyborgs are built, equips himself and Bill with a gun that can knock out the giants goes into the woods again and promptly loses the fight with the giants (0-5 really he’s just awful at this) and it put into a cell where the assistant who is the madman decides to pour poison gas into the cell but Superargo and Bill levitate over the gas until they are rescued by the Granddaughter who is later killed by the madman (0-6) – he does manage by using his mind power to break the chains holding the cell doors closed that house the kidnapped athletes not yet turned into machines. There is a final fight were the robots are destroyed and the madman is chased into the woods were a very very convenient  bit a quicksand takes him while Superargo and the others look in not making a move to rescue him.

Here’s the thing, this isn’t some vigilante dressed up as a well whatever he’s is dressed up as he’s last we checked an government law enforcement official (albeit dressed very oddly) it’s not his place to say well we’ll save the cost of a trial this way (and save the world hearing about the number of times you screwed up trying to stop him Superargo and especially abandoning the man who dressed up as you to a very dire fate – at best being turned into a Robot as worst fed to the Madman’s giant Octopus – they all have them. Trust me)

Not really as much fun as it could be really as Superargo’s continual failures during most of the film kind of undercut his superheroing thing.

Enjoy with Indian take out.

Revenge of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 2 - Valley of the Dragons

Well it looks like I really got started late on this project –as the Oscars are this weekend and I am on number two. Ah well I will push on as best I can and try to get this project done at least before all the Oscar winners are out on Blu-ray.

I digress.

These days special effects are a huge part of the movie going experience – the Star Wars films being a prime example of how worlds not our own can be imagined and made to seem real and the Jurassic Park films (despite the unfortunate nature of the sequels) showed brought Dinosaurs and other creatures to seeming reality.

This was, needless to say not always the case.

Special effects were really bad laughably so some times.

And what was worse they got recycled.

This is something that doesn’t happen much in films these days but in the 50’s and 60’s it was pretty common practice for low budget films to use stock footage to expand their running times or when the script needed a monster or two folks would dip into the stock footage vault and toss any old thing on the screen then cut to the actors reacting to it.  It was the massive use of this that gave Ed Wood’s films some of its distinctive look (he was far from alone in this). To modern eyes it is painfully obvious that the poor lizard with the fin glued to it is from a different film but I guess the couples necking in the dark or kids parked for a matinee by parents didn’t care much.

This long introduction brings us to today’s film Valley of the Dragons. And no there are no dragons.  Which should give you an idea of just what a clunker this film is – that and that I’m writing about it I guess.

This 1961 film is very very loosely based on a Jules Vern novel ‘A Career on a Comet” from the 1880’s - ;it was not one of Verne’s  (the Author of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, From Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth) more inspired moments.

We open in Algeria in 1881 two men a French officer and Irish adventurer are going to fight a duel over a lady when they are interrupted by stock footage from It came from Out Space, which was also used in Robot Monster (nothing is telling me I really need a life more than realizing I have recognized stock footage from another film but have remember where else it had been used).

There is a general disaster and the duelist’s seconds are blown away in the wind and storm. When the storm subsides the pair realize the landscape has changed and that were there was desert there is now scrub brush –then jungle – then Neanderthals.

They fend off the Neanderthals (men in cheap masks) they as they go along realize they are not on earth anymore – and I think this is the only special effects shot specific to the movie where they are looking up at night and seeing the earth.

The French Officer then hits on the idea that they are on a comet that this comet hit the earth a glancing blow and then picked up the chunk of Algeria that they were standing on and as it had done this before there were the Neanderthals along with, they discover, prehistoric animals and stock footage mostly from the 1940’s version of One Million Years BC with a shot or two of Rodan tossed in for general surrealism I guess.

There is also a volcano , just how that is supposed to work on land dug out of the earth is not mentioned but really the less you think about the entire concept the better.

While this whole silly comet scooping up a bit of earth and flies away with it without everybody and everything on it dying instantly was taken from the Vern novel (as noted not his proudest moment) Vern wrote that in 1881 or so when we didn’t know so much about comets – that they used this stupid plot idea in 1961 is a bit more irritating yes it’s just a movie but still.

Well the two explore find two different tribes of cave men (steal their clothes so they will look like the people in the stock footage shots) watch stock footage of  two lizards fight to the death (animals were harmed in the making of One Million Years BC – it’s painful to watch ) get separated and one each ends up being taken in by one tribe where both meet cute cave women, The French men a blonde lady and the Irish Man a Burnette who they teach ‘the kiss’ to ,  Blonde lady does a swim in I guess a prehistoric bikini (and as a side note it would seem leg shaving and make up were after fire and the spear the first things developed by primitive man) there is a volcanic eruption (of course there is, ever see a volcano in a movie that didn’t erupt?) and then a struggle against more lizards in stock footage which the blow up because the Frenchman remembers the formula for gunpowder (did the guy who wrote the Star Trek episode with Kirk and the Grorn see this film and pinch the idea – who knows) and  I can’t quite place the film in this case.

In the end the two tribes who had been hostile come together in harmony the Frenchman announces that the comet will come near the earth in seven years which will give them plenty of time to boink the cave ladies and figure out a way to escape the comet.

Roll Credits

Aside from the ludicrous setting on  comet this is pretty much a paint by numbers lost world film including cave ladies and lizards – none of the acting is awful but everybody just seems to going through the motions but then so is the film.

Enjoy with French Wine and Irish Cheese. 

The revenge of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 days of Cheese

I know I wasn’t able to do this last year and again I am starting late but…I will give it a try this time and therefore

Day One.

The Day the Fish Came out – (1967)

This film is.. interesting…Mihalis Kakogiannis made good films and was even nominated for a slew of awards for the film Zorba the Greek , Tom Courtenay, Colin Blakely, Candice Bergen all of who are in this were in good films.  But this is not a good film.

Made by Mihalis right after the massive success of Zorba this is an attempted black comedy in the mode of Dr. Strangelove that falls amazingly flat.

And yes the costumes – well, the film is apparently (I’ve watched a few times and I can’t remember where this was mentioned) set in 1974 with the assumption that things just got weirder after the 60’s well they did but not in a good way but that’s a story for another time.

Back to the costumes – one does not want to say they are too gay but – well they are just too gay – folks at the Greenwich Village Halloween parade would be saying ‘hey tone it down a bit guys’ .

So some 20 young men led by Col. Whatever arrived on the small Greek island – announce they are looking for site to build a hotel – as they wander the rocky part of the island they are seen by the Navigator and pilot who assume they are all gay (they don’t use that word) and hide from them.

I suppose it was intended to be ironic that the help they are looking for are right in front of them but it comes off stupid.

Meantime meantime meantine – it seems that a goat herder has found object Q and assuming whatever is inside of it must be insanely valuable tries to open it using a hammer, a dentist drill and other devices, these sequences like those of the two running about in their underwear go on far longer than anything needs to.

Meantime meantime meantime word has gotten out to the jet set that someone is thinking of building a hotel on this island, which instantly transforms into the hot stop of the season. Soon boatloads of people are coming ashore in costumes are in keeping with the ones the USAF team wears – soon there is drinking and dancing and all sorts of things.

Meantime meantime meantime meantime – the USAF group is getting frustrated because they cannot find Q – they have the two bombs but Q eludes them. When one of the interchangeable air force guys suggests maybe one of the goat herders found it, Col. Whatever shrugs this off and says there is no danger the metal is a special alloy that only a special formula can open.

I think we cut back to the goat herder banging the box with a hammer but I am not sure it could have been the clowns in the underwear.

This was a film that took itself seriously or something one of the weird notes is that the pair’s underwear gets dirtier as time goes on – of course, this means that whoever was in charge of wardrobe or someone underneath them was spending some part of their day making underwear look dirty. “What and leave Show Business?”

Meantime (take the rest as given) – a statue is found on the island which brings an pair of archeologists one of whom is Candice Bergen who was very young when she did this film and is stunning to look at – a beauty that is unblemished by any real acting – to be fair there isn’t’ much for her to do – 1 – to totally turn the head of the poor sap from the air force  and to the mechanism by which the acid arrives on the island.

There is a weird moment when she is looking at the statue and talking about how beautiful it is then jabbering something about a woman’s body being boring with all the bumps and things – to which I say speak for yourself my dear.

Candice gets to wear some bizarre outfits which because she is so stunningly beautiful look good on here – she and poor sap have a brief fling – during the course of the goatherd steals the acid and Candice for reasons other than the movie hating us, leaves.

I’ve probably written more about this than most of the films I’ll do this time but – this one really irked me no more so than at the end.

Eventually the goatherd after a false start manages to open container Q – inside are honestly what look like dog turds goatherd and wife handle them without apparent harm although we’ve been lead to whatever is in the box is insanely dangerous.  Goatherd then dumps the box and most of the turds into the ocean and the wife who has held onto some of the turds because movie ends up tossing them into the islands water supply

Then the fish come out dead one assumes from whatever the hell was Q. I mean god in heaven not even a hint? I watched this movie a couple of times just to make sure no. they never tell us what the hell was in the box and why it was so deadly –

The film ends with the USAF team realizing Q has been opened – the dead fish are the giveaway, mutt and Jeff realize that the team is from the air force, the people are all drinking the contaminated water (we think) and then the film ends with someone saying attention please over and over again as the film just kind of ends.

Film just doesn’t work – either as serious or comedy or satire – I think it was trying to hit too many targets at the same time and didn’t really have a point of view or tone that carries itself through the film which is why this think irritates me so , there was something there but it got lost in the scattershot tone of the film.

Enjoy with Greek take out.